Friday, December 1, 2017

Entangled Publishing's 25 Days of Holiday Steals - Day 1 - His to Take by Katee Robert

Entangled Publishing is celebrating the holidays with 25 Days of Holiday Steals. They will be spotlighting a special steal of a deal each day from December 1st through December 25th. So be sure to check back each day to see what special offer is up for grabs that day!

Today's Steal is...

Are you ready to get Brazen? His to Take by Katee Robert is FREE! So be sure to grab your copy today.

Truth or dare… Erin Robinson is having an epically bad year. Her blossoming career on Broadway tanked, forcing her to crawl back to home to Wellington. The icing on her failure cake? Her former on-again, off-again fling is in town, and the sexy Marine is taking up way too much space. Warren Davis always knew Erin was special, which is exactly why he can’t have her. A girl like her deserves something permanent–something neither of them wants. But now that they’re both back in town and she’s right there in front of him, a challenge in her eyes he’s never been able to resist, he’s questioning everything. That challenge quickly escalates into an epic game of Truth or Dare. Erin’s sure she’s got him on lock, but as the night progresses, Warren’s dares intensify, drowning her in lust. But with the past still breathing down their necks, there’s no way either of them can win…

Erin Robinson glanced at her phone for the fifth time in five
minutes. Unfortunately, the minutes hadn’t gone backward and no texts had
arrived, which meant only one thing—she’d been stood up. There was no other way
to explain her blind date’s being over thirty minutes late and not bothering
with some sort of reassuring something to let her know he wasn’t dead in
a ditch somewhere. It might be snowing outside, but any citizen in the
Wellingford area worth their salt had prepared for the harsh winter months ago.
This guy apparently grew up the next town over. If he hadn’t put studs on his
truck and sandbags in the bed, he was an idiot.

Kind of like I’m an idiot for agreeing to this date in the first
place.

She’d only done it to get her mother off her back for a little
while. Erin had figured the worst that would happen was that the guy would be
an insufferable dick, and she’d spent enough time with guys like that over the
years to know how to deal with them.

Being stood up never entered into her realm of possibilities.

She glanced around Chilly’s, hoping she didn’t see anyone she
knew. That would just be the icing on the humiliation cake she’d been eating
for the last month. After she’d turned nineteen and blown out of here with both
middle fingers up to move to New York, she’d never once considered that she’d
be back here six years later with her tail between her legs, jobless and forced
to move back in with her parents. The Wellingford rumor mill hadn’t quite
figured that out yet, though. Thank God. She’d threatened both her
parents with a lifetime of therapy bills if they told anyone that she was back
for anything other than visiting over the holidays between shows.

Visiting permanently.

Shame stuck in her throat. She should have kept her mouth shut
last month when Randy, aka Director Douche, started spouting about her
performance as Ariel in The Little Mermaid. Everyone knew he was a dick,
and she had the part. For the first time, she wasn’t an understudy or
relegated to the background. It was going to be her big break.

But then he’d made Maggie cry. The girl was tough as nails, even
if she was only twelve, and he’d stripped all that confidence away with a few
sharp words. And that, Erin couldn’t deal with silently.

Well, she’d paid for her attitude by getting fired, and then the
universe decided to stomp on her while she was down in the form of her landlord
kicking her ass to the curb. Apparently he was tired of waiting “just one more
month” for her to catch up on rent.

So, here she was, occupying a stool in Chilly’s, the one bar worth
mentioning in the one-stop town she grew up in. The place where everyone knew
everyone else’s name—and could recite their family tree back half a dozen
generations. The past was never the past here.

“Hey, stranger.

Erin stared at her beer, wondering if the bartender, Gena, had
slipped her a little something extra, because there was no other explanation
for hearing that voice in her ear. Spend too much time thinking about
the past and it’ll creep up on you. Next thing I know, I’ll be as bad as my
parents, constantly living in the glory days. She took another drink of her
beer to buy herself time before she had to turn around and face the fact that
either she was hallucinating in a truly magical fashion or, even worse, that
Warren Davis was standing right behind her.

Hearing his voice was all it took for her imagination to kick into
high gear. She didn’t have to look at him to feel him at her back,
probably wearing that self-satisfied smirk he always seemed to have on his
face. Unfortunately, it didn’t make him any less attractive. If she
concentrated, she could almost catch a whiff of the expensive cologne he
favored.

Nothing for it. She had to face the music. She took a fortifying breath and spun
on her stool, her heart jumping into her throat in a seriously annoying way.
Some things never changed, and apparently her reaction to this particular man
was one of them.

It didn’t help that he looked… Hell, he looked really good.
His hair was shorn close to his head in the traditional Marine style, but it
was all too easy to picture the way it curled when he let too long go between
haircuts. Every time she went back to New York after visiting home, she’d half
convinced herself that his dark brown eyes couldn’t possibly be as soulful as
she remembered—and every time she was wrong. And his mouth…

Erin flushed and reached for her beer again. She had firsthand
knowledge of just how devastating that mouth could be—both in and out of the
bedroom.

Stop it. Stop it right now.

The last thing she had the energy to do was dredge up the attitude
necessary to deal with Warren, but she tried anyway. “Hey, yourself.”

“Nice comeback.” He dropped onto the stool next to her.

That was another thing she almost always managed to forget—how
damn aggravating the man could be. Five seconds in his presence and she was
transported back to when she was a hotheaded nineteen-year-old with more
hormones than sense, and the one wild summer they’d spent together. Erin
glared. “Find another seat. This one is taken.”

“By your imaginary friend?” He nodded at Gena. “You’ve been
sitting alone for half an hour with no one in sight. If he’s not here by now,
he’s not coming.”

He’d been here the entire time, watching her? How did I miss
him? Her face went hot enough to scald. It was bad enough knowing she’d
been stood up—it was a thousand times worse to know that he had
witnessed it. “You’re unbelievable. I’m waiting for Marcy.”

“Liar. She and Aaron are out of town until tomorrow.” He rubbed a
hand over his mouth, his dark eyes shining with amusement. “Which is a damn
good thing, because your brother still hasn’t gotten over his love of giving me
speeding tickets after my granddad set Marcy and I up a while back.”

Erin looked away, fighting the urge to smile. Marcy had told her
about that, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t make her day a little bit
brighter to know that her brother went out of his way to shit on Warren’s day
when he could. “You should consider yourself lucky. If he knew half of the
stuff you pulled with me when we first met, he’d kill you.” But her brother
didn’t know. No one knew—not even her best friend, Marcy. The forbidden and
secret aspect of their relationship—if it could be called that—had been part of
the attraction back then.

Now it just felt stupid.

“No, he wouldn’t.” He accepted the beer Gena set in front of him
with a smile. “He might whup your ass for getting involved with me, but Aaron
is too honorable to stoop to something like murder for his rebellious Mini Me.”

Mini Me. One of the many hated nicknames that she’d never been
able to escape because of her parents’ questionable taste in naming their son
and daughter versions of the same damn name. There was no excuse for that kind
of lunacy. The best she could tell, her mother had insisted they name their
second child Erin out of sheer stubbornness. Pregnancy-related hormones did
weird things to the brain—she’d seen that well enough when Marcy was knocked
up—and her mother had never met a mistake she was willing to admit to. So
despite her father’s pleading, she’d refused to change the initial name on the
birth certificate.

Which is how Aaron and Erin came to be.

The town took it in stride like it did most of the locals’ quirks,
and everyone and their dog had taken to fondly calling Erin some variation of
“Mini Me.” As if she weren’t her own entity. She’d half thought that it would
change after Aaron graduated and went off to join the army.

She should have known better.

Just like she should have known that engaging Warren in any type
of conversation was a mistake. It ended only one of two ways, neither of which
she had the wherewithal to deal with.

Erin finished off her beer. “As fun as this has been, I’m
leaving.” She carefully counted out her last few five-dollar bills and set them
on the counter next to her beer. I am so broke, it’s not even funny. Thought
I might at least get a free meal out of this damn date, and here I am, paying
for my own drinks. It was time to get out of here. The longer she stayed in
Warren’s presence, the closer she came to losing what little self-control she
had. Right now she was leaning toward snarking that smug expression right off
his Marine face, but she knew herself well enough to know that could flip like
a switch. And the last thing she needed was to make the mistake of
falling back into bed with Warren Davis. With her current luck, it would be the
straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

It didn’t matter how many times she’d told herself the same thing
over the years and then promptly ignored her own advice. She always woke up the
next morning in a pit of self-loathing and angst—which was why she’d taken to
avoiding him over the last year. When the hurt started outweighing the
pleasure, it was time to kick the habit.

She pushed to her feet, trying to ignore the way he did the same.
“I mean it, Warren.”

“When did you become a coward?”

“I’m not a goddamn coward.” She froze. How does he always
manage to do that? A few words and he was under her skin, poking at things
she thought she was too mature to be riled by. She turned around to face him
and—surprise, surprise—he was wearing that little smirk that made her breathing
pick up. Not this time, Erin. You know better, remember? “Knowing a
losing battle when I see it isn’t cowardly. It’s smart.”

Warren searched her face, and for a second, she thought he’d drop
the smart-ass act, but then the corner of his mouth quirked up. “So who was the
poor shmuck you scared away? Anyone I know?”

Irritation got the best of her—again—and she spoke without
thinking, “And why is it always my fault? I didn’t do a damn thing to the guy.”
She hadn’t done more than respond to his texts. Yeah, she might have been a
little short with him, and maybe she corrected his atrocious grammar once or
twice, but how was she supposed to take this guy seriously when he used
emoticons and shortened all his words to their letter counterparts? It was like
texting with a teenager.

“Maybe he was intimidated.”

She glared. “You know damn well that’s not the case.” She wished
she could be intimidating. Her life would have gone a whole lot differently if
that was something she could pull off, but with her shoulder-length curly brown
hair, freckles, and wide hazel eyes, she’d grown up with comments about how
delicate and breakable she looked. It just made her more fiercely determined to
prove everyone wrong.

Hearing his pet name for her on his lips was a jolt she needed
like another hole in the head. Erin looked him up and down, keeping her
expression unimpressed despite the way the man filled out a thermal shirt. And
those jeans… Get a hold of yourself. “You’re not wearing boots.” She
turned back for the door.

“What are you doing back in town?”

Nope. No way was she doing this. She motioned to the Christmas
lights strung up over every available beam in the room. “That’s a stupid
question. It’s Christmas in two days.”

Now that she mentioned it, that explained what Warren was doing
back in town. He liked to come home during the holidays to visit his
grandfather, Old Joe. It was part of the reason she’d made excuses last year to
come in for the minimum time necessary to meet her familial obligations—this
was the one time of year she was guaranteed to see the man if she wasn’t
careful.

“See you around.” But
hopefully not too much. Erin kept her head high as she pushed through the
door and out into the frozen night. Though it was exactly what she wanted, she
couldn’t help feeling a smidgen of disappointment when she realized he wasn’t
following her.